Mark as Unread
by shelter
Summary: Short Story. Modern Day AU. Former Organization #47 Clare is followed by her nature & her experience. But here, in the postmodern 21st Century world order, life throws at her its own tragedies.
1. Part One

**MARK AS UNREAD **

A Modern Day Claymore Short Story

* * *

_Thanks to the writers any Animesuki (MisterJB, Yosei, Shiek, Ryuken, ShippU) for the comments & critique in helping me with this story. It will probably be the first & the last time I'll do a modern day AU. _

_This story was written on a whim. But owes its inspiration to Modern day AUs like Useful Oxymoron's Life Sucks! & Supreme Distraction's Enter New York City._

* * *

**PART ONE**

_"I'm counting them down yeah, one by one;  
it feels like forever till I return to you -  
but it helps me on those lonely nights -  
it's that one thing that keeps me alive"_  
- **Wait for Me**, _Theory of a Deadman_

**1.**

"Get up – I don't fight my opponents from behind."

Circling her opponent, she blinks once – then twice, eyes not daring to depart from the figure now scurrying to stand, desperate to secure her footing. She holds her head high, her eyes glancing forward, as if to show her opponent how real fighting should be conducted. In the sweat-scarred delirium of battle, however, Clare finds her fists unconsciously curling, as if around an invisible sword – a blade made of air.

And all around their fighting, the bright swaying sweep of outback scrub frame their duel. A sky missing clouds watches them. Wind whips soiled sand into their dancing legs.

Her opponent comes, cutting, flying: an elbow pummeling toward her face –

"Good!" She encourages. "Come at me!"

But Clare has already seen everything: she flattens her hands, and then parries the blow, absorbing so much force she feels her right leg buckle. A wave of panic – but no, she fixates herself on the force of her hand instead of the yoki building up from beneath. And with an upward cut she pulls her opponents' elbow and flips her overhead in an effortless, fluid sweep.

When her opponent staggers up again, she assumes a guard, and lets her opponent swing, swipe and batter her as hard as she can. Then Clare prepares a fist – knuckles pulled so tight that when they collide with her opponent's abs she feels an entire shockwave of adrenaline-laced force dribble through her arm. A snarling yell of pain, and her opponent totters like a drunkard. The fight is over; Clare knows her victory is secure. So she extends an arm to her floored sparring partner, who is sprawled in the sand, breath bursting for reprieve.

"Work on your speed," Clare tells her opponent, who attaches a hand on her shoulder for support. Her head of dirt-scrubbed hair barely clears Clare's monstrous protruding shoulder, an emblem of pure muscle.

"Wasn't I fast enough?"

"Not fast enough to beat Marianne."

"But I _was_ trying!"

"Then we have to try harder, Aisha."

Clare knows she has never been the affectionate kind, but at that moment – perhaps out of some impulsive reflex action – she finds herself shaking the sand out of her young sparring partner's hair. And Aisha laughs: girlish, high-pitched but, most importantly of all – innocent, naïve, yet untouched by the wide wayward world. She swats Clare's hand away with playful cut of her arm, which reminds Clare of –

"You know, sometimes I feel you're like an older sister," Aisha ventures.

But Clare is already walking away. She picks up the remnants of their fight – torn fabric, extra clothing, a water bottle – and throws them into her haversack. Then, steadying her red Super-Four, she calls Aisha. It will be a short ride back to town.

Throughout the ride, she keeps the visor of her helmet open, so at every turn the wind slaps her like a fist across her cheeks, but because she is after all, immortal, such inconveniences are but sensations of a fleeting kind. Aisha's arms, wrapped like a lanky ribbon tight around her waist, tug at her navel when she tackles the final crest of the outback road.

After ten minutes of pushing speed above the limit, she decelerates when she sees the sign: TOWNSVILLE, QN. As she cruises down the street, the entire city opens up under her, flanked on both sides by leafless scrub, sand rises and quiet houses. The sea blinks beyond the clutter of the urban sprawl. Clare flicks the brakes, negotiates a turn and outclasses a slow moving car. Ten minutes later, she can smell the sea. And she is home.

* * *

**2.**

On times when she wants to preoccupy herself with an aimless round of thoughts, she rehearses a repetitive sequence: there are reasons why she – Clare – renegade warrior of the long sword, survivor of the notorious massacre at Pieta, member of the legendary seven ghosts, chose Townsville as her adopted town. Clare would like herself to believe the reasons are mostly aesthetic: bright and sunny Queensland, friendly locals, good locale, no snow, and – Australia! (Who wouldn't want to live in Australia?) She likes these reasons; they push her one step further towards an immortality of contentment.

But she knows, as she races through the streets to get to work, a few reasons are instrumental: historical erasure of a recurring past, for example. And to get away from the others, especially Miria. Whom she has not spoken to face-to-face since the turn of the century.

She knows that down under, ten thousand miles away from where her comrades have settled down, she is invisible. No one knows – or cares – who she is. She can be Clare, the Super-Four junkie; or Clare, the Muay Thai instructor.

Or Clare, the lover/ girlfriend.

Shaiful is, of course, not the best man in the world, but at Clare's age (shudder), she feels he will do. To her, he is taller, weaker, ridiculously pampering and – as Clare can attest – a good fighter. The last factor is important, because Clare first caught him eyeing her at one of her classes. When challenged, Shaiful did not back down. He could last twenty minutes with Clare going all out, and an extra five before being floored. As a reward, Clare thought he was worthy date-material. And she is proud at herself for being right.

"Do you always have to be in control?" he would ask her.

Clare would lie in the leathered cradle, the seat of her Super-Four, as he draped his arms over her from behind, his chin like a tooth jabbing deliciously into the flesh at the side of her neck. She preferred him without long hair. She would tell him to keep his hair short; she likes him when he is in a G2000 shirt and a tie. Clare thinks herself old-school.

"There's one thing that you can't control, Clare, whether you like it or not."

Clare does not like to admit her own wrong. But Shaiful, a Corporal with the ADF, is actually right. Just like every location she has settled down in had its downsides – London and its weather, Mumbai's hypocritical poverty, Hanoi during the Indochinese War, New York's restless crowds – Townsville is home to the 4th Field Regiment of the Royal Australian Artillery, of which Shaiful is trained as a battery officer. And, in what she has deemed a potential curse to everyone she comes into contact with, Shaiful's regiment was picked for overseas deployment in Afghanistan.

It has been six months since his departure, and Clare still drives by his barracks on the way to work, taking a long detour of ten minutes. But she settles not for a wistful longing, or the nostalgia of a girl who has a boyfriend in combat. She chooses an embittered irony, laced with an indifference which only can be shed by two things: a Super-Four and Aisha.

In his emails to her, sent across seas, oceans and hostile lands, he always ends with the phrase: _take care of my baby sis_. Even though Aisha hates being called a baby, and even though Clare still thinks she can be a bit whiny, she accedes, for his sake.

Sometimes she rides faster when she thinks of all this – this tiny obstacle to complete utter happiness. But mostly, she accelerates and lets the wind rip through the loosened strap of her helmet because she finds this too familiar. Aisha the bright-eyed youngster in awe of her fighting skill and rugged lifestyle – her elder brother the persistent gentleman in uniform who says things solemnly like, "I'll be back, I promise" and, "serious – you'll just have to survive, like me." Sometimes it reminds her too much of –

* * *

**3.**

After work, which involves the arduous instructing of fitness freaks and Orientalist enthusiasts who are abashed that a blonde lady can perform Muay Thai like Tony Jaa, she rides down to Aisha's school. She has promised the young punk she can expect her every Wednesday and Friday.

At the stretch of road mutilated with zebra-crossings for students, she settles herself at a position with a good view of the gates. She gets bored, lights a Malboro, and stares out into the students trickling down from the steps of the school.

From a distance of at least three hundred metres, she sees Aisha, her white uniform undone, a tongue of blouse over her darker skirt. She is surrounded by three – no, four other girls. In a movement almost blinding to the eye, Clare sees her throw a punch at the largest girl behind her – but, Clare thinks, the jab lacked killing intent. Sure enough, the larger girl absorbs it, and with an outstretched palm smashes into Aisha's forehead. A yell of laughter or triumph or both decks across to her, and to concerned parents watching the show. Aisha, clutching her head, receives a crude roundhouse kick from the larger girl as her contemporaries yip and circle her like gut-deprived yoma.

When Aisha finally trudges out of the gates to meet Clare, she fastens her eyes at a point to the left of Clare's face. A hand clutches the back of her head; without a word she mounts the bike.

"You didn't hit hard enough," Clare says, as she kicks off, swinging into traffic.

"You were _watching_?" Aisha's sudden retort almost throws both of them off balance. "You were watching and do you didn't even help?"

They drive out of the city, as Clare plans. Past the lonely billboards and the outposts of petrol kiosks, the city ends and fades away into a sandy suburban stretch of streets which all look the same. Further still, and they reach their favourite sandbank. Even before Clare parks behind a dumpster bleached by dirt and surrounded with plastic bags like gravestones, Aisha is off and circling Clare.

"Why didn't you help?" she screams, with more hurt pride than anger.

Clare does not like shouting. Or talking. So she chucks her helmet aside, unbuttons the first two slots on her shirt and they begin fighting, upstaged only by the dying sunlight.

It is an elbow to the side of her face that takes Aisha down. She stumbles and has to latch onto the dumpster for support. Now all the lights are on: the streetlights which guard the main road back to Townsville look like a hideous tongue extending from the brighter, fiercer metropolitan glare. She does not go to help Aisha up. Instead, she retreats to the Super-Four, pries open the box and removes the beer.

She stations herself within reach of Aisha, whose white uniform blouse is so spotted with blood that it looks fashionable. Clare knows the hostility is gone. And within minutes they are sitting together, Aisha's head mounted on Clare's shoulder, the tilted bottle in her hands flicking light all over the dark shade of the dumpster.

"You still haven't told me why you didn't help."

Clare lights a Malboro. "I don't fight other people's fights."

She remembers that phrase very clearly – like an apology, an excuse, a declaration of independence which she threw at Miria's face once upon a time.

"But you saw Marianne with her friends."

"Which gives you an advantage."

Aisha laughs hopelessly. She plucks the cigarette from Clare's fingers and takes a drag herself. "You're impossible to deal with, you know. How did you convince my bro to date you?"

Clare smiles. But now she is not in the mood for talking. Aisha takes the empty bottle and flings it across the sandy ban k, towards the road, where it lands with a satisfying clink. Fragments dust the road. The younger girl lingers around. Sometimes, as buses from inland shoot down the road, Clare watches their headlights blink and pattern Aisha in frantic light. She thinks she sees Shaiful there, in that fallible frame. But she sees Afghanistan too: the dumpster a tan k, the lights gunfire and the blood –

"You're going to wash this for me since you made this mess, right?" says Aisha, as she examines her blouse.

The cigarette hangs defiantly from her lips like loose tooth. Its fiery light is long dead.

* * *

**4.**

_I hope you're not teaching Aisha all your bad habits, like your smoking, _Shaiful writes back in his emails, which Clare always marks as unread after reading them. His messages are clean of detail – so clean they seem as if the computer were generating the alphabets itself.

"Every day, I promise," Clare remembers Shaiful telling her. She can still remember the scene of his departure: the door of her house, his full-pack making him look bigger than usual, the impatience of his fellow mates and their wolf-whistling. Clare had remarked, how damn melodramatic.

He was supposed to write to her every day, but Clare is tired of rapidly bruising her fingers clicking the refresh button. _I'm not as free as I thought I would be, _is his excuse. And as she hits the mark as unread button for the one hundredth time, she does not really know now what to believe.

But it is Shaiful's injured comrade, Shane Locke, who Clare is inclined to believe. _He was discharged from combat after surviving an insurgent ambush, _Shaiful had written, although she cannot see anything wrong with him other than his extremely active social life – he is all around the city, cruising in a borrowed sports car, his military-shorn head already sporting a clean, faux Mohawk. On the occasions when they meet, Shane always offers her a wide smile, a smile purchased with being the sole man to crawl out alive after an attack.

"Life is tough there. But they'll be back soon," he tells her, his smile increasing as he steadies her Super-Four. "That's a nice bike."

_Don't trust everything he says, _Shaiful advises.

So she keeps her distance. He asks her out for drinks; lunch too, but Clare refuses. Sometimes, when she does late nights or when she drives Aisha home, he sees Shane's car parked outside the houses of his fellow mates' lonely girlfriends.

* * *

**5.**

Summer in Townsville comes with Christmas, and New Year's Day. It comes with one of Aisha's classmates getting a house call by smiling Shane, who now has the duty of delivering the news of his fellow unit members killed in action – Australian casualties in Afghanistan hit the first ten combat deaths.

It also signals six months of Shaiful's absence, which Clare commemorates by taking herself down to the Strand, a strip of beach lining the edge of the city as it dissolves into the Pacific Ocean.

She circles the traffic junctions, not bothering to park, until she feels the wind bracing against her fingers. She dismounts, crosses the Strand to a headland with a scattering of trees like wayward dust and a bench perched ominously, facing the sea.

Clare unlocks the strain in her knuckles, dabbed with red, swollen flesh at her bare-knuckled spars with Aisha, who is sincerely getting better. Leaning one hand on the salt-encrusted wood of the bench, she throws her eyes up to the watery white line of the horizon thousands of miles east. She takes a deep breath: the stirring wind is so strong she feels she is breathing in water.

It is just her and the sea, she thinks, as it has been for years now. Drifting, floating, with the horizon always too hard to reach.

When she gets back, Shaiful's email is marked unread by her Yahoo browser. It is short, but clear enough: _I miss you too_.

* * *

**6.**

"Did you see me? Did you see me floor her?"

She did. Clare will be forced to admit that Aisha did almost everything right: non-provocation, letting the opponent make the fatal mistake, the angle of her blows, the elbow swipe which she taught her and the near-nonchalance which Aisha walked away. The final move is, to Clare, a sign which she interprets simply: that this young punk is getting more mature.

She had been teaching Aisha some of the finer moves of close combat,_ Muay Thai_-style, where even elbows and shoulder blades were offensive. So watching Aisha apply almost everything she had learnt in their late-night sparring sessions near the dumpster, Clare cannot help but feel she has finally made a willing, fast-learning disciple – at no cost.

Marianne did not stand a chance. She had started the fight, attempted some half-hearted jabs to Aisha's face, and then Aisha had responded. One-two-three uppercuts to the ribs, as rapid as a machine gun as Clare had taught. Then, as the larger girl reeled, Clare remembers watching from the jumble spectators outside the gate how Aisha had crashed into Marianne with the deadly elbow, completely sweeping her off her feet like a swarm of dead leaves. The concerned parents outside were – concerned. Even before Aisha had exited the school, they were yelling, aghast, frantic.

"Was flooring her worth detention till the end of the term?" Clare asks her quietly.

Aisha is leaning on the dumpster, the lights tracing the trunk roads back to Townsville bloom in her eyes and give her cheeks their crimson-brown deepness. Clare thinks the cigarette clenched between her pencil-thin fingers looks almost natural, as if she had been born with it.

"Screw authority," she says. "Screw detention."

Clare wants to tell her that, no, screwing authority (and detention) will have consequences, but for now she does not really care. She just wants to smoke away the evening which, she recalls, is their first time spending the evening at the dumpster without fighting.

"So Clare, will you train me then?"

The question seems strange to Clare. "I'm already teaching you."

"No, seriously. Train me at your school or whatever. Train me to be like you."

Clare looks past Aisha into the other end of Townsville, where the road with lights burning brightly all along its side stretches far from the city centre. It goes along the coast, further north to the collection of unknown towns by the Great Barrier Reef beaches, strung out like beads on a string. She is reminded of herself staring out at the sea, one hand on a bench behind her, lights from afar like stars tossed by the water.

For a second she almost tells Aisha: no, you can never be like me, because I'm… She almost lets fly everything from Pieta to the unusual ingredient in her blood to why she is so good at combat. But she doesn't. She knows she could because, after all, no one is around to tell her not to.

"Fine."

"Fine?" Aisha pinches the cigarette stub from her hand and hurls it across the sandbank with a finger. "What's that supposed to mean, Clare?"

"What do you think?" Clare replies. And before she knows it Aisha is swarming over her, but the force is affectionate, and Aisha is mumbling her thanks into her stomach.

As she drops Aisha off at her empty house, Clare thinks life could never be better. Then, checking her email, she finds nothing from Shaiful. Instead, in its place is message from someone whom she has not talked to in years. She does not know whether she should even open it. But she does, and upon that click the message becomes apparent: _Miria wants to meet. _

TBC

_

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Part two will be posted next week, when I've finished by last round of edits._

**NOTES:**

1. Townsville is NOT a cartoon town. It is a city in the state of Queensland, Australia.

2. Muay Thai is traditional Thai martial arts.

3. Any other things look strange, then ask me. I'll be glad to answer :)


	2. Part Two

**MARK AS UNREAD (Pt.2)**

* * *

**7.**

"You said you don't have any relatives living in Aussie land," Aisha had, perceptively, pointed out.

"They're not my flesh and blood," Clare recalls trying to skip the subject. "They're just – comrades. Nothing more."

"Really?"

"Really – so shut it."

Still, as she exits the terminal at Kingsford-Smith in Sydney, she knows the relationship between these _comrades_ is much more complicated than a "nothing more". She knows, from Aisha's tone, she does not believe her. And she does not blame the younger girl for her suspicion: because Clare hates lying to cover up her own past.

Clare hails a taxi for her hotel. Their choice of a city for this rendezvous is strategic, she thinks: Sydney is near enough for her, and international enough for those coming from America or Europe or wherever. But she does not want to think of it now. At the hotel, she absent-mindedly searches for her Super-Four – then realizes she is being stupid. Without it, she feels she lacks a part of her body. And without Aisha's hyperactive punkish-ness to whittle away the tension, she feels she lacks a part of her soul.

At the appointed time, she dons a blazer, a pair of jeans which Aisha had picked for her and one of Shaiful's stud-diamond earrings he had given her as a gift. She only wears the piece on her left ear because Shaiful has the one for the right. Sentimentality when selectively applied, she believes, keeps her sane.

It is already evening, the outside of her small room blocked out by darkness, and she is consciously late. But she brings her shades with her anyway.

The meeting place is a reserved room at a restaurant, along the waterfront. Here, among industrial buildings outfitted for outdoor dining, she does not quicken her pace, but tries to settle into a self-conscious stride, as if she is back in a wasteland town seeking yoma to hunt. And there she sees the place: one of those wannabe-historical eateries. Its entrance is camouflaged by diners loud and boisterous on good seafood and too much white wine. But when the waiter at the entrance sees her, he beckons her within; he leads her to a door, presided over by a mirror spanning the length of the stone wall.

Before she enters she takes a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She thinks she looks serene and controlled enough, like a stone angel atop a tombstone.

She pushes away her own reflection and ventures inside.

"Yo."

Everything in the room stops – the insect-like murmur of dinner conversation, the high-pitched friction of fork-knife, the shuffling of feet – and immediately six faces burst at Clare's direction. She stands there, at the threshold, accepting their gaze, not moving, patiently looking away from them, at a point above their heads.

It has always been me and them, she thinks.

Then a voice, stretched by sarcasm, shatters the silence: "Well – well, the prodigal son returns."

"Helen, shut up."

It is Tabitha who receives her. She takes her hands in greeting, warmth forcing its way into the distant tips of her fingers, with that inevitable sensation she has not felt for so long: being yoma-touched. There is a seat available, conveniently, furthest away from Miria.

But Miria is already standing up and Clare knows avoiding her will not be polite.

"It's been a long time."

Clare meets Miria's formal claim with an automatic jerking of her head. She does not want to look as if she is being hostile. So when Miria embraces her, she receives the customary latching of arms and the tactile brushing of the senior warrior's face near hers. She responds in kind, flashes another automatic smile and leaves to sit beside a tight-faced Yuma.

"Hello Clare," goes Yuma.

"Yeah."

* * *

**8.**

For the rest of dinner the conversation recovers from her presence and reaches its pre-entrance energetic quality. Helen and Cynthia, she notices, take the lead as usual, each acting their roles as the adventurous maniac and the dumb blonde respectively. The remainder laughs with them, or huddle in to listen to something like a team of deaf football players. Clare, instead, decides her food is better company.

But nonetheless from the things she hears she has a rough update of the other six and how they are whittling away in postmodern life their luxurious immortality. Helen and Deneve in New York; Tabitha and Miria in London, on contract to plan the next Olympics or something like that; Cynthia (as usual) on the fashion trail in Milan and Yuma –

"Never in all our years could we imagine that you would be farming, with a cowboy boyfriend in the package," Helen blurts, the excessive supply of white wine making her hyperactive.

"Life should be taken one step at a time." And Yuma makes sipping wine out of a glass a gesture to rival the classiest of socialites.

Dinner ends, then desserts are ushered in, followed by – as Clare expects – harder liquor. She scouts down the table and already knows, from countless prior banquets, feasts and dinners, that it is time for Helen to make a fool of herself, Cynthia to blush at the slightest touch of alcohol and Deneve to act as if nothing is going on when Helen begins to drift into delinquent conversation. She knows that, even now, as Helen passes the brandy and hideous bottles of dangerous liquid, Miria will start talking in lower tones to Tabitha and Yuma will join them.

So, Clare decides it's time to get going, so she gets up, nods to the table in general and leaves.

No one stops her.  
**  
**

* * *

**9.**

She makes to the waterfront; there, she fishes a Malboro from her blazer pocket, but has trouble lighting it because of the wind. However, when she does, she finds someone else present.

"Mine too, if you don't mind." Tabitha's cigarette points outwards to her, like an extension of her arm.

"Since when do you smoke?" Clare shoots back, but shares the lighter's wildly dancing flame anyway.

"Since they invented them."

Clare flattens her elbow on the rails, gazing out to the Sydney Opera House and its triangular shadowy lights across the harbour. The wind pastes her hair to her face. But she keeps her eye on Tabitha who, in the style of all her training as the Eye, stands with shoulders squared, her body stiff. Clare thinks Miria's pet looks different: the braided, the chaste attire, the reserved attitude is gone. Instead, her hair has enough spikes and waxed curls to rival a Korean pop-star, and – Clare stares, obliquely – is Tabitha wearing skinnies?

"Things change, you know," Tabitha says, without turning.

"Pity the ones deep down don't."

"Like your antisocial pride?"

"And you still fucking Miria?"

Clare tenses at the sudden movement, but it is only Tabitha flicking her cigarette on to the ground, where it bounces into scattering orange ember, sinking into the pavement.

"That was vulgar."

And Clare starts laughing.

"What is wrong with –" This time Tabitha turns to confront her. The pathetic light from the waterfront steals away the potential fury in her eyes.

Clare finds watching Tabitha linger on the brink of losing control as pleasurable as sucker-punching Aisha. Her fellow comrade slices her hand across her hand across her forehead as if brushing away stray streaks of hair, but the other remains clenched, attached to the railings. Still, Clare knows when enough is enough:

"Ok, Tabitha. Think I went too far – sorry about that."

Tabitha does not lower her gaze. "What happened Clare, that made you so damn angry?"

She offers Tabitha a barking laugh so loaded with sarcasm she finds it difficult to get it into words: "You already know very well."

"There you go again."

She takes this as her cue to shut – for now, and so she turns to the harbour instead, studying the star-like blinking of ships further out. She listens as Tabitha sighs, audibly, pawing her hands into her pockets, standing, her face blocked by the Clare's shadow, away from her.

"Clare." Tabitha voice is strained. And sad. "You have to move on."

"Thanks for the advice."

"How is he, if I may ask?"

Clare is tempted tell Tabitha it is none of her damn business, but she turns away from her and answers, half-hoping the rush of landward wind would carry away her words:

"He was sent to Afghanistan to fight another man's war." Clare decides to add as an afterthought: "The men in my life either run away or are taken away from me. Ironic, don't you think?"

When Tabitha drapes an arm over her shoulder, Clare does not react. It feels just like old times: comrades and survivors of Pieta bearing each others' burdens through the dead north. She lets it linger, before pushing herself away from the rails. But even though Tabitha's arm slides off, it leaves an impression on her arm – as if a weight had implanted itself into her shoulder.

"Will you come back and join them?" she asks her.

Clare does not respond. She stares at Tabitha, and then her comrade gets smaller and smaller, and further away. She cannot tell if her legs are backing away on her behalf, but when she has put ten metres between them she already knows her answer. She pauses; from ten metres, she thinks Tabitha is just another lithe youngster, a dolled-up punk with hair so distorted by with wax that she looks like a heroine from a Shojo-Ai flick, with legs so thin they seem to cut the scenery behind her with their outlines. From ten metres, she looks like Aisha.

But no, Clare knows that appearances are deceiving and she, like Tabitha, is part of the lie, an unfolding truth, planted into the scenery.

She tells Tabitha:

"Thanks for asking."

And she turns her back on the waterfront.  


* * *

**10.**

_I've always wondered why I've never beaten you once in a fight._

Clare remembers Shaiful asking her, at the one – the only one time – when she had come so close to giving away her warrior-identity to him.

When her fists brush blows against him, she can feel the sweat on his body lubricate the grooves of her knuckles and, when he jerks away to parry or block, the sweeping whirl of her strokes are so strong they leave suntanned-like bruises all over Shaiful's arms. She can already predict which way he will turn; she has always thought his oversized shirt, bristling like a flag stung by too much wind, is a childish giveaway to the movements he will execute. An inefficient liability, she tells him.

_It's not always about fighting, Clare._

She knows the shuffling of his flat-palmed arms indicate the amount of muscles involve in every stance. She knows, even more serenely, an elbow to the chin or a prickling jab to the ribcage can cripple him. But she prefers to give him space: to move, to defend, to prove himself, to live.

But when he has found an opening, she collapses back into instinct: her right arm flicks itself in his direction, trembling so quickly that Shaiful has to raise his own arms to prevent himself from being hit. Before she can stop herself, she has driven the striking form of her arm, her coiled fingers and gripping palm into him, and he flies –

Flies as if he had been cut by a Windcutter.

_You still have any more tricks up your sleeve?_

She remembers his voice, like his accusation, hides a surrendering but wounded hurt. But at this point she does not know what he saying, and she settles instead for any part of that memory – the dark smear of blood over his shirt, a chunk of his torso exposed, the crooked curl of his teeth attempting to bite down pain – to remember him by. Everything about him has, she feels, become so abstract. Everything about him, she thinks, has become nothing but sentences – with :) behind them like full-stops hiding deeper things.

Clare lights and dreams while letting the Malboro fill her mouth and head. She does not want to fall asleep on a bed too big for her and –

And it is only when the cigarette has died out completely, its ash branded into her fingers that she realizes it is already morning, a blurry scar of light infiltrating through the curtains. As she leaves and checks out she thinks she accidentally passes someone at the airport that looks like Tabitha. But she does not scare herself into caring further.

The airport offers free Internet access. And Shaiful, his words omniscient, mutters to her with the invisible tone of overused broadband:

_I'm counting the days one-by-one too.  


* * *

_

**11.**

But the days are heavy with smoke.

"There's something you're not telling me." Aisha whispers, riding in the back of the Super-Four, her arms tightening around Clare's waist like a fleshy belt. Her breath is humid with cigarette smoke: Clare thinks she is smoking too much, thinks that someone who is still schooling should not be filtering her allowances away on drags.

"Didn't I tell you to stop asking?"

But Aisha adds: "You know, you told me it's not good to keep things bottled up."

"There's nothing wrong with me."

At their favourite dumpster, Clare thinks several weeks' of zero training and term break has made her newest trainee different. She sizes up the girl, remembers Tabitha by the waterfront at Sydney and sees it. But she disposes the imaginary apprehension from her head; she finds it ridiculous to assume Aisha is taking on Claymore traits. She finds it even more laughable when the girl comes at her, fists out, knees locked, bare feet coated with sand.

Clare does not even need to sweat.

"You shouldn't be giving your teacher a lecture when you're so pitiful," Clare taunts her.

She absorbs Aisha's entire body weight with her two arms criss-crossed in front of her. They tangle. Clare unties the proximity of their movements with a lenient elbow to her student's shoulders. When Aisha loses her footing while attempting to react, Clare finds herself thinking Shaiful was probably right when he told her:

_Teaching Aisha how to spar too? About time :)… she needs really needs your undivided attention. _

But Shaiful is not so weak, she thinks. The second time Aisha comes, her eyes are dancing with intent. Clare takes a punch head-on, letting the force flatten itself into her palms, then seizes the set of offending knuckles, yanking them down. Aisha cannot help but stumble, the tanned triangle at the back of her neck exposed. For a split second, Clare holds her in the position – she smells the generous sweat, the odour of Shaiful's unwashed singlet Aisha is wearing, the vague stench of febreze from her own clothes – then quietly knocks Aisha aside with her knee.

"You're not even trying!"

Aisha staggers, her face alight with what Clare thinks is a believable nosebleed.

"What's up with you today?" she demands.

Clare finds herself yelling back: "Shut up and fight!"

_You'll probably go as hard on her as you did with me, yeah? Eh but remember she not a fighter like u._

Behind their forms the buses materialize, approach, then dissolve into the overwhelming canvas of cloud, orange and descending sun. But the drone, the breathing of their diesel engines echoes all along the sandbank and deserted outskirts – an echo so pervasive that the crippling roundhouse kick Aisha delivers to Clare's defending arms gets never gets its proper credit. All Clare senses is the energy beneath her skin boil for just a moment, and then radiate through her, flushing her cheeks with a brief shade of crimson.

_After all I think you worry too much about everything. Don't worry if Aisha's not doing as good as you think._

Clare thinks she sees the first sign of twilight far, far east beyond Aisha's clenched form, the dusting of stars in the mauve horizon, like the finest needle-points in the low sky. She thinks that, several thousand miles away, Shaiful will probably have seen off the last shreds of night, on another day of fighting. She thinks of the same sky, sprayed with the bloated forms of clouds – a same set of sky from Townsville to Afghanistan to London – friend, foe, comrade, fellow warriors all accountable to the same sky.

_Or about me._

_Okay?_

"Fine."

And Aisha's knee connects with the sky – Clare sees the evening burst and explode right in front of her eyes.

"Get up!"

When her eyes grope for light – any light – Clare finds them swimming with sand, the clouds now the shadow of the dumpster, as Aisha calls out again:

"You told me not to fight opponents when they're down. Get up, Clare!"

She feels her face aflame, her joints freshly limber, her stomach burdensome with hunger. When her eyes open, everything is in a different colour. So much so that when Aisha rushes at her, Clare already knows the result: something within her unlocks, the blow deflects off her without any effort and she is behind Aisha before the girl has even touched the ground.

But she checks herself: "Enough."

Even though Clare believes the amount so insignificant, the air around smolders at the release of yoki. It sickens her and Clare knows cannot falter again – for Aisha's sake – so she calmly steps away, lights a Malboro to calm herself and gets on the bike.

"Clare –"

She is afraid her eyes are changed, so she does not face Aisha: "There's nothing wrong with me. I'm just tired."

"No. I'm sorry – about that. We'd better go home –"

Everything _is_ in a different colour: redder, darker. Then she understands how badly she is bleeding when the blood from where Aisha hit her flakes from her forehead in a waxy plume, extinguishing her cigarette.  


* * *

**12.**

She rides back into town, Aisha on pillion behind her. A slice of the younger girl's jacket makes improvised bandage which reduces Clare's vision to a square of road through her helmet. She can sense the younger girl's anxiety, her arms clawing into her abdomen.

The injury is bad. And Clare understands why she had to tap into her reserves: the wound needs yoki to heal.

As she traverses the turn at the end of the street, her eyes swing to an obtusely-coloured sports car halted parallel to her low terrace. Then, when she wraps around her gate, she sees a man crouching, like a stone gargoyle, at the side of her door.

"No –"

"Who's that?"

But Clare already knows. Without a word to Aisha she dismounts, then tears the helmet from her face, stripping the bandage over her wound as well. The man's stunned face reduces into a crimson stain, porous, against the larger, inconsistent form of her house. Her feet rake the gravel, making each step seem as she is shedding skin.

The man is wearing an army jacket, a piece of white paper and folder nestled in his hands like weapons.

The man says: "Clare – wow, that's a bad cut."

"Get out of my way, Shane."

She evades him. It takes her several strides, and with the slam of her door she insulates herself from everything else. What the hollow interior of her home seems unfamiliar – but she forages through the corridors, scooping a cup to the floor – it shatters in between her legs and evaporates into dust when she threads over them accidentally – and before she can understand or realise it, Clare finds herself captive to an audience of cupboards in her storeroom –

Aisha's voice from without: "Clare, are you okay?"

When she opens the first door, her fingers twitch so violently she shears the entire wooden panel from its hinges – she digs, like an animal desperate to escape reality, folds and strata of her clothes, equipment and, memories in their concrete form – she begins to cough – and blood leaks from the lapse of her tongue onto the marble floor –

Finally – finally her hands scratch treasure – and with a heave she extracts a set of armour, bleached into rust from disuse and – and what she thinks is her Claymore.

But she cannot control her yoki anymore. It hacks its way into her head – a hurricane-like migraine – and her room shudders with the shock. When the shaking fails to stop, she screams.  


* * *

**13.**

_Where have you been all my life?_

She can trace his backbone, a canvas of knuckle-like knobs, through the thin fabric of his shirt, blotted with stains of sweat from his exertion – and his inability to even break down her offensive guard. She can follow the lines of sweat as they collect, and then begin to dry under the pressure of her palm. When she removes her hand, she can feel it, like watery glue, glossy in the folds of her fingers. She washes them away with his hair.

She stays where she is, feeling the rise and fall of his ribcage as he breathes, her arms surrounding his torso. When he turns, her hands wash over his face, as if clearing away the rubble of years and years of her own degenerative memory to purify his face. There, his eyes overcome the feeble fear of her fingers, his hands carve out the imperfect flesh of her thighs, her crotch, her knees –

But when she drinks from his mouth, a fountain of iron-tasting saliva – blood, she thinks – bubbles through to lacerate her tongue.

_Promise me you'll stay alive._

But his shadow has already been poured over the ground, seeping away towards the thrashing environment enclosing them. She sees his uniform, the full-pack on his shoulders, his weapon glimmering in the sunshine and grinning at her. But when he turns to wave goodbye, he does not look anything like Shaiful.

_I promise you I will definitely find you. _

When he calls out to her, she cannot tell if he is coming or going. His voice circulates around a single spot, his shadow trailing in his wake, jagged-edged, condensing into the form of a Claymore blade planted into the ground. She knows the memorial, she even knows that voice:

"Raki?"

But the man is walking away, and nothing else looms but the grave-marker, fringed with the accumulating debris of her own refusal to accept everything.

* * *

**14.**

When she forces herself to stand, she sees herself peering into the fractured mirror, one-half of the diamond stud blinking to her in her ear.

And Shane's voice calling from outside: "I'm sorry Clare. But it's my job to break the news."  


* * *

**15.**

When she emerges out into the night, everything sharpens and concentrates on the two figures paused in the gravel of her yard: a man with his arm curled around a weeping girl like a shawl, trickling into the open neck of her singlet.

"Finally!" Shane says, exasperated. "Please…let's not make this harder than –"

She flicks her Claymore at him.

His arm explodes into a thousand cuts, falling away from Aisha. Before he can even holler in pain, she swishes her wrist again and carves a single, incision down his face.

"My – my arm!"

"Stay away from her," Clare announces.

Aisha is looking at the Claymore, her watery red eyes swimming in complete disbelief. But Clare drags Shane to his feet, and her hand still holding her sword, runs her knee upward into his chin. While he groans in agony on the ground, she hauls him over to his car, breaks the windshield with a single punch and starts the engine.

"What are you doing?" he shouts.

"Shut up." And Clare lifts to his feet and hammers him four, five times with the hilt of her Claymore.

She chucks Shane into the car; to her, he appears to be semi-conscious, so she tears a seat-belt out from its place and binds him to the passenger seat. Before taking off she orders Aisha to wait for her. She revs the vehicle once, twice and when travelling through the streets easily hits a hundred on the speedometer. She charges through evening traffic, to the outskirts of the city, to the dumpster, sitting ominously on the sandbank. There she takes hold of Shane by his good arm and dumps him inside the metal carriage, fastening the lock on the cover.

"No don't kill me! Don't kill me!" he screeches, his voice booming out through the closed cover.

But Clare leads the dumpster out onto the road, placing it in the centre of where she knows buses will be going too fast to break, speeding too recklessly to consider such a ramshackle piece of metal lying in middle of their cross-continental route. She convinces herself of this when, for good measure, she rams the sports car into it as she backs away back to the city.

When she arrives back at her house, Aisha has her head in her hands. Clare sees tears escaping through the cracks between her fingers.

But for now she does not bother with comfort or encouragement. Instead she cleans Aisha's cheeks with the sleeve of her shirt, tells her to stand, tells her that her brother would have died fighting, proudly, like a warrior. Despite the hollow eulogy, Clare forces herself to disarm her own tears.

Then Clare pauses: she knows the next step is something she has never done before. She knows that Miria will definitely disapprove – that Tabitha will be disappointed with her impulsive stubbornness, and that this has only been done once, ever, in her entire lived history, and to a man she once loved. But she already knows what she will tell Tabitha should they meet: _this is my way of moving on._

"Forgive me, I've not been telling you the truth." she says to Aisha. Then she holds out her Claymore to her, hilt outstretched, inviting, eager. Aisha hesitates.

And Clare says: "Take it. From today onwards, I will teach you to be like me."  
.

.

.

_END_

08.08.09 (Final Edit)

* * *

**NOTES**: Simply glad you took time off to read. Not my best work I know, but I had fun writing this.


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